Philip Barry Jr.; Award-Winning TV Producer

Philip Barry Jr., an Emmy- and Peabody-winning television producer whose career spanned the history of the medium, has died. He was 74.

Barry, who won the top awards for the special “Friendly Fire,” starring Carol Burnett, died Saturday in a New York City hospital of cancer.

The son of playwright Philip Barry Sr.--known for such classics as “The Philadelphia Story”--and artist Ellen Semple Barry, the young Barry found his own artistic metier on the small screen.

After graduating from Yale University and serving in the Navy during World War II, he tried live theater, helping to produce a London staging of the senior Barry’s play “The Animal Kingdom,” and later the posthumous New York production of his father’s “Second Threshold.”

Barry also produced a couple of popular motion pictures--”The Mating Game,” starring Debbie Reynolds in 1958, and “Sail a Crooked Ship,” starring Robert Wagner in 1962.

He easily settled into television, starting in its “live” years as story editor for “Robert Montgomery Presents.” He moved on to become associate producer of other theatrical series--”The Motorola TV House,” “Center Stage,” “The Elgin Hour,” “The Alcoa Hour” and “The Goodyear Playhouse.”

As television developed, Barry produced pioneering specials and movies, turning out “The Glass House,” “The Migrants,” “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom.”

In recent years, his output included such memorable shows as “First You Cry,” starring Mary Tyler Moore, “Kent State,” the cable movie “Chernobyl: The Final Warning,” and the miniseries of Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude.”

Barry served on the steering committee of the Caucus of Producers, Writers and Directors, and edited its quarterly newsletter. He also was on the boards of the American Film Institute and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and was a dramaturge at the National Playwrights Conference.

Survivors include his wife, actress Patricia Barry; two daughters, Miranda Robbins Barry and Stephanie Anne Thankful Barry Agnew; and two grandchildren.

The family has asked that any California memorial donations be made to the American Film Institute and the John Tracy Clinic.

Funeral services are scheduled Saturday in New York, with a memorial service planned June 8 at New York’s St. James Theatre. Another memorial service is pending at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood.